Bashar Assad

The media have had great fun asking the Republican presidential candidates whether they would have gone to war in Iraq had they known there were no weapons of mass destruction. Whenever the media can corner Hillary Clinton, they might ask some what-if questions: • If you had known the Islamic State would rush in, would you have negotiated the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq, or would you have insisted on a stay-behind force of the type the military recommended? •If you knew how it would affect public perception of your honesty, would you have wiped the server at your home clean? •If you knew Russia would invade Ukraine, would you have embarked on Russian reset?...

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The media have had great fun asking the Republican presidential candidates whether they would have gone to war in Iraq had they known there were no weapons of mass destruction. Whenever the media can corner Hillary Clinton, they might ask some what-if...

While Iran's march toward a nuclear bomb has provoked a major clash between the White House and Congress, Iran's march toward conventional domination of the Arab world has been largely overlooked. In Washington, that is. The Arabs have noticed. And the...

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The squabbling factions that make up the Syrian "moderate opposition" should get their act together. But so should the foreign nations — such as the United States, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan — that have been funding the chaotic...

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What was the Islamic State thinking? We know it is sophisticated in its use of modern media. But what was the logic of propagating to the world videos of its beheadings of two Americans (and subsequently a Briton) — sure to inflame public opinion?
...

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Syrian rebel commanders had invited me to travel with them inside their country, entering through a crossing point near Rabah al-Sarhan, Jordan, but the Jordanian government emphatically said no. So this account is based on interviews with Syrians I met...

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Vladimir Putin is a lucky man. And he's got three more years of luck to come.
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President Barack Obama is approaching one of those moments when a big turn in foreign policy is possible. People can debate whether it's the equivalent of the opening to China or the end of the Cold War, but there's no doubt that this is a time of...

Early this month, Secretary of State John Kerry applied a misguided sense of history to today's American foreign policy. In an attempt to galvanize international support for military intervention in Syria for President Bashar al-Assad's violation of...